See? This is why a blog topic led me to wander through Animaniacs songs, there was a connection!

Not too long ago, Jennet of OtterDown spent some time talking about the inevitable failure of players trying to guess their game’s population. The entire piece is worth a read, but the gist is without the actual numbers in front of us, we are all just guessing based on personal bias. Like most things, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, it just behooves us to remember that our guesses are just that – guesses based on a very small pool of information.

I’d like to add something to the conversation about another guess often made by players that we tend to present as Truth: The “everybody hates/likes the thing” comment. While it may seem obvious that no one player can speak for the entire game, I’m not sure we always realize how far off the ball we may be. Continue Reading

I try VERY hard not to judge games I’ve never played, and that goes double for games I haven’t personally looked into. It’s a good goal, and has saved me from many foot-in-mouth situations, but I’m not perfect. Sometimes I hear enough about a game to start forming opinions based on what others are saying, often without even realizing I’m doing so. Such was the case with Five Nights at Freddy’s and its sequels.

When the game was first being talked about, I somehow formed the idea that it was about college kids staying at a haunted house on a dare. I’m not even joking, and I’m not sure how that happened. I further gathered that it was a horror game based on jump scares for the “screamy” Let’s Players – two things that are not my cup of tea. (No insult meant to anyone, there.)

I knew I hadn’t played or even looked at the game, but underneath those logical thoughts were all kinds of assumptions.

Last night, random Youtube binging led me to catch up on what Jim Sterling has been up to. When I got to his Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 video, I paused to go back and see what he thought of the others. After watching his short first look plays on each game in the series, and being interested enough to look up the wiki, it was clear to me that most of my “obvious” assumptions about the games were incorrect.

(Errr, I mean other than completely missing the actual setup! A security guard there because of his job, and later a kid in his room at night, are both more interesting to me than college kids out on a dare. Also, Freddy’s is not so much a haunted house.) Continue Reading

I don’t watch a lot of reality tv shows. To be more accurate, I don’t watch a lot of tv. I don’t say that as a judgment on anyone else. I just had to unplug my cable for house renovations years ago and realized I didn’t miss it when it was gone. Since I didn’t miss it, I never plugged it back in.

Having said that, sometimes I get on a Netflix kick and watch a show that everyone else has been keeping up with for years. This time around it’s been Kitchen Nightmares (US), and I was surprised when I started seeing a connection to gaming. Confused? I’ll explain. Continue Reading